An Opportunity for Yoga Tourism Industry to Make a Triple Impact
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rism & ou H Patwardhan, J Tourism Hospit 2016, 5:4 f T o s o l p DOI: 10.4172/2167-0269.1000235 a i t n a r l i u t y o J Journal of Tourism & Hospitality ISSN: 2167-0269 PerspectiveResearch Article OpenOpen Access Access Disparities in the Use of Yoga: An Opportunity for Yoga Tourism Industry to Make a Triple Impact Avinash Patwardhan* Department of Global & Community Health, George Mason University, Fairfax VA 22030, USA Abstract Tourism is increasing globally and is predicted to grow. There is also a noticeable change in the motivation for tourism from hedonic to eudemonic self-realization oriented spiritual pursuits. As a part of this process, ‘yoga tourism’ is gaining popularity. However, this development is encumbered with disparities. Yoga tourism purportedly offers to assuage the adverse effects of stress and chronic diseases partially induced by modernity. These predicaments affect everybody uniformly, rather in some ways, worse for men and the low socioeconomic groups. Yet, only 15.8% of the yoga practitioners are males and tourism is mostly out of the reach of the low socioeconomic groups. The situation provides yoga tourism industry an opportunity. How to get started with yoga is a barrier for males and financial constraint is a major barrier for the low socioeconomic groups to undertake tourism or yoga. It is known that many female yoga tourists have a happy family/personal life. Yoga tourism industry can offer attractive financial and hedonic incentives (pull) to motivate them to bring along their male counterparts. On the other hand, social tourism (financially subsidized tourism for the disadvantaged) exists but does not enjoy much support due to lack of advocacy. Yoga tourism industry can spearhead an incentive driven advocacy movement to lobby charity organizations and government welfare agencies to support social (yoga) tourism. (1) This will open up the hitherto untapped huge male and the low socioeconomic groups market and (2) The event participation might help males and the low socioeconomic groups to overcome their respective barriers and introduce them to yoga practice. Apart from market growth and growth of yoga use, in a long run these developments have the potential to translate into substantial public health benefits in terms of reduction in stress, disease burden, health costs and loss of productivity. Keywords: Yoga tourism; Social tourism; yoga; Public health; Health While it is unfortunate that such disparities should exist, therein also disparities; Eudemonic; Spirituality; Low socioeconomic groups lies a triple opportunity for yoga tourism industry, to target and market into hitherto untapped subpopulations of males and low socioeconomic Introduction groups, to (1) increase overall yoga use among communities to make it uniform in terms of gender and socioeconomic strata (2) increase Health benefits of tourism, such as relief from stress or anxiety growth of (yoga) tourism industry and, (3) indirectly assist public [1], better quality of sleep [2], improvement in relationships [3], and health efforts to reduce costs and burden of chronic diseases and to satisfaction with life [4] are well documented. In the post-modern increase productivity. era of global capitalism [5], it is therefore natural that tourism should be growing sizably [6]. Similarly, it is also established that yoga offers Disparity in the Practice of Yoga between Females and benefits in health promotion [7] and disease mitigation [8]. Amidst the Males global tide of chronic diseases [9], it is therefore not surprising that yoga use is also increasing in current times [10]. Furthermore and as The general reference to an increase in the practice of yoga can a result, the synergy of yoga and tourism in the form of ‘yoga tourism’ be easily misconstrued as being universal and applicable to all the is garnering increasing interest among its various stakeholders like segments of the population uniformly. A 2013 national survey of yoga industry [11], end users [12], and scholars [13]. practitioners showed that only 15.8% of the yoga users were males [24]. Yoga is advocated for its utility in health and disease for everybody. However, these positive trends are encumbered with a few Nonetheless, there is evidence that compared to females; males show disheartening paradoxes. The younger generation is more health higher incidences of obesity [25], coronary heart disease [26], and conscious, but it is also the one that is more stressed out [14]; the low back pain [27]. Since yoga is known to show efficacy in helping females practice yoga more, but they have been experiencing higher these conditions [28,29], the small percentage of males using yoga stress compared to males and get more adversely affected by it [15]; constitutes a huge missed opportunity from a public health standpoint. yoga use is on a rise, but so is the overall stress in life [16]; interest Furthermore, this underuse can easily translate into higher health care in tourism is increasing, but violence like terrorism is dampening the costs and decreased productivity [30]. tourists’ enthusiasm [17]. While the causal connections among the above contradictory phenomena that generally feed into each other are complex [5]; one *Corresponding author: Avinash Patwardhan, Department of Global & Community Health, George Mason University, Fairfax VA 22030, USA, Tel: (571) observation that jumps out is that whether it is yoga or tourism, both 455-2038; E-mail: [email protected] depict a picture of disparity [18,19]. It is apparent that the number of females practicing yoga is disproportionately larger than males [18], Received July 22, 2016; Accepted August 17, 2016; Published August 23, 2016 and prima facie yoga appears to be an activity of the elites [20], serving Citation: Patwardhan A (2016) Disparities in the Use of Yoga: An Opportunity primarily the upper socioeconomic strata in the society; practiced by for Yoga Tourism Industry to Make a Triple Impact. J Tourism Hospit 5: 235. doi: 10.4172/2167-0269.1000235 the well educated, apparently young and healthy, who have a decent upper middle class or higher income [18,21,22]. On the other hand, it is Copyright: © 2016 Patwardhan A. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted seen that the low socioeconomic populations engage in tourism much use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and less than those from the upper classes [23]. source are credited. J Tourism Hospit, an open access journal Volume 5 • Issue 4 • 1000235 ISSN: 2167-0269 Citation: Patwardhan A (2016) Disparities in the Use of Yoga: An Opportunity for Yoga Tourism Industry to Make a Triple Impact. J Tourism Hospit 5: 235. doi: 10.4172/2167-0269.1000235 Page 2 of 4 Disparity in the practice of tourism or yoga between fare systems [42]. Studies have demonstrated that tourism has a posi- high and low socioeconomic classes tive impact on economically or otherwise disadvantaged groups such as low-income families, and people with health issues and disabilities It is known that the chance of engaging in touristic activities [43]. There is evidence that non-participation in tourism can have diminishes with lower socioeconomic status [31,32]. Literature also adverse implications for wellbeing in later life [3]. Additionally, there suggests that people from low socioeconomic strata, particularly based are several studies that have found beneficial effects of social tourism on education, participate less in yoga [18,21]. The lack of access to in different groups of disadvantaged populations [19,44,45]. Further- tourism and yoga in the low socioeconomic populations makes them more and despite current economic austerity, there is an interest among miss the health benefits of both, again leading to loss of health and charities and governments regarding economic benefits of social tour- productivity [33]. ism [46,47]. However, as Jablonska, Jaremko, and Timčák expound, because of numerous complex factors, there is not sufficient advocacy Opportunity for yoga tourism industry for social tourism [42]. For example, because tourism is considered as Males are interested in tourism as much as females, and might discretionary activity, social tourism in hardly known in the US and use yoga if they have help with one key barrier: Though females tend only little found in the UK; and with scarce public funding [48]. Riding to seek more escape and relaxation oriented tourism than males [34], on the crest of popularity of yoga in the general public and taking help as far as wish to collect the experiences offered by the commercial from yoga champions and advocates among the well-to-do people, yoga tourism industry, there appears to be homogeneity between the tourism industry can fill in the gap. genders [35,36]. There is indication that lately males are showing an increasing interest in health tourism [37]. On the other hand, though A roadmap for Yoga Tourism Industry to Capitalize on no rigorous analysis has been done about why males practice yoga the above Opportunity less, one study notes that among the barriers, not knowing ‘how to get Create a Strong Pull: Push and pull mechanisms are known in the started’ applies more to males than females [38]. It appears that males motivation for touristic activities, where push are the internal motiva- have no less inclination for tourism or health tourism than females, tors and the pulls are usually the external incentives that lead to touris- and if somehow males can be brought to yoga tourist events, those tic activities [49,50]. Current yoga tourists are driven by a strong push events can serve as a point of entry for males to get introduced to the of the desire to explore one’s spirituality and to seek transcendental practice of yoga. meaning and peace in life [5].